The present invention relates to sport training, and more particularly but not exclusively, to ball game training, using ball throwing machines.
Today, many professional and amateur athletes use ball throwing machines to practice their particular sport.
For example, tennis ball throwing machines (also referred to as ball machines, ball projecting machines, etc.) are extremely useful practice tools for tennis players.
Typically, these machines are loaded with tennis balls and placed at an end of a tennis court which is opposite the practicing player.
Usually, the desired trajectory of the ball is set, either manually by the player or with the aid of a remote control. Balls are then lobbed or shot out of the machine towards the player, to allow practice shots to be hit. Such machines usually project tennis balls or other types of balls, by utilizing pneumatic power, rotating wheels, and/or spring power, to grasp the balls and project them outwardly.
As ball throwing machines have been utilized for many years by now, there have been many improvements in throwing machine technology.
For example, higher end tennis ball throwing machines have been provided with more ways to control the trajectory of the projected tennis balls, say in order to provide for left and right ball throwing variations, as well as for up and down ball throwing variations.
Some of those higher end tennis ball throwing machines have been provided with some level of pre-programming and storing of the kind of shots and the sequence of shots that a tennis player wishes to practice returning.
Having been programmed that way, a ball throwing machine serves the ball shots in the pre-programmed sequence of ball shots, progressing from one ball shot to the other.
The ball throwing machine progresses from one ball shot to the other, each time the tennis player pushes a button, or rather automatically, say with time intervals that may optionally, be preset by the tennis player or his coach.
For example, some of the ball machines currently in use allow the user (say the tennis player or the player's coach), to adjust the timing of a firing sequence. Thus, for example, if the tennis ball machine is set on a fast speed, shots may be fired every two seconds. Similarly, if the ball machine is set on a slow speed, a longer period of time will lapse between shots.